Naju

I decided to look into the work of a designer who has previously designed for Ministry of Sound to gain inspiration. Common characteristics I noticed include:

•  a heavy use of bold, bright colours throughout, which really catch your eye and make the designs aesthetically pleasing. 
• Fonts used tend to be sans serif, very easily legible and very modern. 
• A mixture of weights throughout the fonts in order to make certain parts of the image and text stand out more. 
• A heavy use of geometric shapes which makes the image look futuristic. 
• Interesting use of mixed media in some designs, more original and imaginative. 
• Contrast of brighter colours against darker backgrounds which brings certain parts of the image forward. 
• Basic shapes and colours make the posters easy to read and seem quite simplistic but there is actually a lot more to them such as layers and effects applied. 

Studio Output

I continued my research to gain further inspiration for my Ministry of Sound brief. I decided to look at a design studio which had previously produced work for Saturday Sessions. I noticed a range of certain successful characteristic throughout their designs including:

• Bright and bold colours. 
• Bold fonts. 
• A focus on interesting graphics and images to draw in attention. 
• Very modern and attracts the target audience successfully. 
• Interesting use of mixed media and photography. 
• More detailed, eccentric fonts used in images, then bold and simplistic fonts used throughout the copy which creates a contrast. 

David Carson

• Perhaps one of the most influential graphic designers of the 1990s
• Best known for his innovative magazine design and experimental use of typography.
• Broke traditional mould of simple type by making the point that letters on a page are art. 
• Signature style uses "dirty" type combined with non-mainstream photographic techniques. 
• Experiments with a range of sizes, alignments, fonts, colours etc. 
• Work produced for Quicksilver in 2011 uses a range of bright colours, bold, large, eye-catching fonts, hand rendered illustration and photography. Reflects the target audience well, however completely different to a lot of his other work which is a lot simpler, yet just as aesthetically pleasing. For example, in his designs created for an exhibition where he has simply combined photography with a much simpler, smaller type and again, in some, has included some basic hand rendered illustration.
• Carson claims his work is "subjective, personal and very self indulgent". 
• Carson takes photography and manipulated and twists them together and sometimes confuses the message. This technique draws in the eyes of the viewer and in turn makes them look deeper into the composition.

Andrea Tinnes

• Andrea Tinnes created her independent one-woman studio 'typecuts' to promote her own fonts. 
• The ‘typecuts’ font library consists of a wide range of typographic forms, including text faces over graphic fonts and also dingbat illustrations. The typefaces Tinnes designs seek to explore the relation between geometric construction and also more playful decorative form while also considering historical contexts as well as contemporary tendencies in typedesign. 

Subeaze - Live Brief

Subeaze is a new sub-contracting company. I was asked to design their logo which included the full url of their website 'subeaze.com'. I designed the logo using a colour scheme which is seen throughout construction graphics such as black, yellow, orange, green etc. I also wanted the logo to be quite masculine and bold again in order to reflect the company and also make it stand out. I designed a few different logos and settled on the following design.

I thought this final design was quite successful, however, it is too obvious and I think a logo which goes further between the lines would be more imaginative and more successful. I could develop this further and play around with shapes in order to make it more individual. 

Penguin Books Brief

The brief provided by Penguin Books was to design a new cover for the novel 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' in order to refresh the book and appeal to a new generation of readers. It was essential that I approached the design at a fresh angle and avoided the obvious cliche's and steered clear from any promotional film graphics. The audience would be all readers, both familiar and unfamiliar to the text and the cover should be effective on its own, but also work digitally on screen for e-books. 

I began by researching some graphic illustrators in order to help inspire my self. I then continued my research and looked at many different existing book covers and existing covers for the novel its self. Again, from this, I learned what worked most effectively, and also what had already been done, so I could avoid that and be more imaginative and creative with my own designs. 

My first designs are a lot more obvious and cliched, with the use of the metal cell door and the barbed wire fence. Although I thought these looked quite effective, they didnt particularly meet the brief as they specifically stated they wanted to see original, striking and imaginative designs. I then began thinking further and developed the designs with the squares, which represented the madness within the book, arranged as though they are a circling black hole. I settled with this final design as I thought it was aesthetically pleasing and met the brief requirements. 

Graphic Design Agencies - Illustration

 The designers within the company do tend to have some similarities within their designs, such as a popular use of digital collages,. However, due to the fact there are many different designers within the company means there is also a lot of individual variation. The majority of work produced by these designers is very modern and colourful.

A lot of the particular designs I looked at seem as though they were all completely digitally produced due to the use of basic images and digital collages. However some of the designs also used a lot of photography and were created by printing images or creating models then photographing them then perhaps manipulating that photograph on Photoshop,  producing a similar effect to that created on the Kate Nash CD cover.

I personally like some of the more detailed digital collages as these are very interesting to look at and I like how the rather random combination of images works very effectively.  I also liked the photography work by Chrissie Macdonald which is seen in the Kate Nash cover and the image in the bottom left. This look very effective and individual and I feel it would work well in any graphic work such as posters, book covers, cd covers etc.

The Peepshow Collective is made up of university graduates who wanted to self promote and share clients. They are young adult designers and tend to work for the same audience, with clients including MTV, DC Shoes , Levi’s and Quicksilver, for example. However, they prove to be versatile by also producing successful work for clients such as The Financial Times,  Waitrose etc.  They meet their target audiences well by producing verstile designs which could appeal to anyone. 

There is a wide variation of different styles throughout the different designers and illustrations produced throughout the agency.  There is a lot of more detailed work produced throughout the agency, such as the  movie poster or the image of the bride and groom in the bottom left and which looks almost like a painting or a photograph manipulated on Photoshop.

Due to the different variations of styles there are many different techniques and materials which may have been used throughout the creations of the illustrations. For example it seems many may have been produced using pen and ink then scanned into Photoshop in order to alter colours or brightness or just finish off the image before printing. Then on the other hand it looks as though some of the designs may have been completely digitally produced, such as some of the digital collages, or they may have been again sketched before importing to Illustrator or Photoshop.  The image of the building may have even been a sketch at first, or potentially a  paper cut out.

I like all of the different variations of styles throughout the agency. I feel the hand drawn book cover design looks very interesting and the attention to detail draws in the audience making it a successful cover design.  I also quite like the Clockwork Orange design as I like how minimalist it seems and how the layers of colour and block shapes work together.

Due to the wide range of styles I feel the company works well in producing different illustrations for any audiences. A quote taken from their website - “We specialize in supplying contemporary illustration to clients worldwide. With a wealth of experience, our artists continue to produce excellent work from book illustrations to billboard posters.”